Subject: A Problem Not in Any Textbook and All the Problems in One Textbook

Physics education researchers have introduced many novel types of problems and compared them to the end-of-chapter textbook problems. As an example, a study using a specially designed problem will first be presented. When expert problem solvers were asked to solve a very complicated circuit problem in think-aloud approach and were also required to rate their self-confidence on solving the problem during their solving process, how different would their performance be comparing to solving a typical textbook problem?

On the other hand, if we focus on the textbook problems, did they change after being studied all these years? In the second study, all the problems of the Electricity and Magnetism chapters of an introductory level textbook have been solved and coded basing on the equations needed and some other problem features. The results show some characteristics of the general textbook problems and their changes in the past three decades.